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A review by bory
A Pale Light in the Black by K.B. Wagers
1.0
I was excited coming into this book. A female-lead, lgbtq+ packed space opera? Yes, please. But, man, was this bad. I've tried reading K.B.Wagers' Behind the Throne before and DNF'ed. I had to force myself to finish a Pale Light in the Black.
There are problems aplenty here. There are two plots in A Pale Light - the Boarding Games and the mystery - that are not interconnected, at all. The Boarding Games are meaningless and mind-numbingly boring. The different branches of the in-universe military competing between each other for... nothing? Recognition that potentially leads to more allocation of funds to the winning branch? Can the takes be any lower? The mystery plot is more interesting, though that is a very low bar to clear, but it is delegated to the background for the majority of the book, to the point that when Wagers re-introduced it post-Games, I had almost forgotten about it.
The characters are very poorly developed. The author has this really bad habit of characterization through monologging (either internal or observational) - all telling, no showing. Sapphi and Temago are non-entities. Max is the personification of beige - bland and tedious. Jenks had the potential to be interesting, if Wagers hadn't shacked her with the boring romance to a nice guy sub-plot.
Speaking of romance, Wagers spent the first half of the book developing the relationship between Max and Jenks. If there ever was an opportunity in this story for an interesting romance, it was between these two and it was squandered. But Jenks is angst-ing over her feeling for nice-guy Luis, and Max develops - kind of - a relationship with nice-guy Nika... oh, and said relationship development occurs in letters these two exchange between chapters.
I'm done. I won't be picking up anything else by K.B. Wagers in the foreseeable future.
There are problems aplenty here. There are two plots in A Pale Light - the Boarding Games and the mystery - that are not interconnected, at all. The Boarding Games are meaningless and mind-numbingly boring. The different branches of the in-universe military competing between each other for... nothing? Recognition that potentially leads to more allocation of funds to the winning branch? Can the takes be any lower? The mystery plot is more interesting, though that is a very low bar to clear, but it is delegated to the background for the majority of the book, to the point that when Wagers re-introduced it post-Games, I had almost forgotten about it.
The characters are very poorly developed. The author has this really bad habit of characterization through monologging (either internal or observational) - all telling, no showing. Sapphi and Temago are non-entities. Max is the personification of beige - bland and tedious. Jenks had the potential to be interesting, if Wagers hadn't shacked her with the boring romance to a nice guy sub-plot.
Speaking of romance, Wagers spent the first half of the book developing the relationship between Max and Jenks. If there ever was an opportunity in this story for an interesting romance, it was between these two and it was squandered. But Jenks is angst-ing over her feeling for nice-guy Luis, and Max develops - kind of - a relationship with nice-guy Nika... oh, and said relationship development occurs in letters these two exchange between chapters.
I'm done. I won't be picking up anything else by K.B. Wagers in the foreseeable future.